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Aladdin Data Cloud
·
Data Catalog
·
2024
Interactive Entity Relationship Diagram
Dynamic entity relationship diagrams for 370+ datasets
Relationship Diagram
Data Catalog
The 30-second version
0:30 read
Role
Product Manager
Team
1 designer, 6 engineers
Timeline
3 months
Platform
Data Catalog
Problem
With no view of how 370+ datasets connected, 67% of users relied on account managers or client services just to understand their data.
650k
ACV unblocked
62%
inquiry decrease
30%
data surface coverage
01 Context
Aladdin Data Cloud, where portfolio analysts, data engineers, and accountants find and combine investment data.
Aladdin Data Cloud (ADC) powered by Snowflake is BlackRock's data platform. Portfolio analysts, data engineers and accounting specialists combine the data available to create portfolio insights, perform month-end book keeping and access the rich data across the environment at scale. Clients browse a catalog of more than 370 datasets to find the data they need.
02 Problem
Getting an answer took a chain of hand-offs and returned a diagram that was quickly out of date.
Users asked their account manager or customer support, and requests ping-ponged through internal teams until someone generated a static diagram and provided it to the customer. The answer lived outside the product, took several hand-offs to arrive, and needed a manual update every time the data changed, leading to inaccurate and stagnant.
03 Solution
I designed a scalable, interactive diagram, focused in a platform-native feel, that works for everyone.
I led the design of an interactive entity relationship diagram, built into the data catalog, that grows to show each dataset’s related datasets. User interviews and a competitive review shaped three design principles:
Native to the catalog. The diagram follows ADC’s design system and lives on the dataset page, so it feels like part of the product rather than a bolted-on tool.
Legible at any scale. Layouts work at both extremes, from a dataset with one relationship to one with many.
Accessible by default. The diagram works for users with visual impairments.
As lead product manager, I wrote the requirements and low-fidelity wireframes, which our designer took to high fidelity. I then planned the work across sprints with a team of 6 engineers and led them to an 87% on-time delivery rate. With product marketing, I shaped the release materials and made sure every cross-functional partner was ready for launch.
04 Result
Fewer support requests for users, and $650K in deals unblocked.
With relationships visible right on the dataset page, users no longer had to go through account managers to understand their data: 62% of related inquiries were redirected to the diagram in the first 2 months.
The feature shipped in three releases with no bugs or rollbacks, and it unblocked 2 expansion deals worth $650K in ACV.
With enhanced user click tracking, we knew which datasets users were utilizing the most, allowing our product marketing and data teams to create targeted support materials for high traffic datasets.
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